This volume offers a comprehensive and empirically rich analysis of regional maritime disputes in the South China Sea (SCS). By discussing important aspects of the rise of China's maritime power, such as territorial disputes, altered perceptions of geo-politics and challenges to the US-led regional order, the authors demonstrate that a regional power shift is taking place in Asia-Pacific. The volume also provides in-depth discussions of the responses to Chinese actions by SCS claimants as well as by important non-claimant actors.

This book provides an up-to-date, rigorous analysis of the state of the art of solar photovoltaic (PV) generation. It focuses on the economic analysis of solar PV generation technologies as well as the policies that have been devised and implemented around the globe to support it. It provides the main theoretical tools for understanding the cost of these technologies, and discusses them from both a historical and comparative perspective with respect to other competing technologies (both conventional and renewable). In addition, it presents the conceptual rationale to maximize reader insights into whether and how public support for these technologies is justified as well as the consequences for the economy of different promotion measures. Integrating concepts from different economics disciplines (environmental economics, innovation economics, industrial economics and public economics) into a coherent basis for the analysis of the costs and policies for solar PV electricity, it provides an update to the literature to reflect recent advances in and deployments of solar electricity and the drastic reduction in associated costs.

This book explores sustainability within manufacturing enterprises and examines the concepts and principles of this field. It also reviews the quantitative and qualitative tools available for analytic assessment. It presents a new framework for sustainable manufacturing requirements and discusses the implementation of sustainable manufacturing in terms of practices, indicators, and sustainability level assessments. The book also details the important conditions necessary for the conversion of existing traditional plants to ones with more sustainable processes. Chapters explore topics including the assessment of economic sustainability, social sustainability, environmental sustainability, sustainable manufacturing practices, and sustainability optimization. Serving as a reference for engineers, managers, and practitioners involved in manufacturing, this book will also be a valuable resource to students and researchers of industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, systems engineering, and operations management.

This book presents a cross-disciplinary approach to smart grids, offering an invaluable basis for understanding their complexity and potential, and for discussing their technical, legal, economic, societal, psychological and security aspects. Smart grids are a complex phenomenon involving new, active roles for consumers and prosumers, novel social, political and cultural practices, advanced ICT, new markets, security of supply issues, the informational turn in energy, valuation of assets and investments, technological innovation and (de)regulation. Furthermore, smart grids offer new interfaces, in turn creating hybrid fields: with the increasing use of electric vehicles and electric transportation, smart grids represent the crossroads of energy and mobility. While the aim is to achieve more sustainable production, transportation and use of energy, the importance of smart grids actually has less to do with electricity, heat or gas, and far more with transforming the infrastructure needed to deliver energy, as well as the roles of its owners, operators and users. The immediate goal is to contribute positively to a sustainable world society. The chapters are revised and expanded texts based upon lectures delivered at the Groningen Energy Summer School 2014. Questions for further discussion at the end of each chapter highlight the key themes that emerge. The book offers an indispensable resource for researchers, professionals and companies in the power supply industry, and for students seeking to broaden and deepen their understanding of smart grids.

This book provides international perspective for those studying or working in the security domain, from enforcement to policy. It focuses on non-traditional threats in a landscape that has been described as transnational in nature and incorporates natural disasters, gang violence, extremism and terrorism, amongst other issues. Chapters provide innovative thinking on themes including cyber security, maritime security, transnational crime, human security, globalization and economic security. Relevant theoretical frameworks are presented and readers are expertly guided through complex threats, from matters pertaining to health security which pose threats not only to humans but also have significant national security implications, to issues regarding critical infrastructure vulnerability and the complexity of understanding terrorist operations. Authors reveal how emerging uncertainties regarding global critical infrastructure and supply chain security, food security, and health security are linked to the notion of human security. Security professionals, policy makers and academics will all gain from the insights, strategies and perspectives in this book. It builds understanding of the deepening and broadening domain of security studies and provides a valuable reference text for courses on security studies and international relations.

Economic diversification remains at the top of the agenda for hundreds of regions around the world. From the single commodity economies of African countries and the Caribbean, to the many single industry regions of Europe and North America, as well as the oil and gas rich but volatile hydrocarbon economies. Economic diversification policies have been around for almost a century with varying degrees of success and failure. Economic Diversification Policies in Natural Resource Rich Economies takes a special interest in the policy experiences of a set of different countries that have extractive industries representing significant drivers of their economies and subsequently are significant contributors to government revenues. It explores twelve cases including upper-middle to high income economies such as Canada, Australia, Iceland and Norway, emerging economies such as Latin America, the GCC (Saudi and UAE), Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Russia, as well as the developing economy of Uganda. Each chapter provides a review of economic diversification experiences including policy environment, diversification strategies, desired outcomes, the role of government, and a critical evaluation of achievements. This book is suitable for those who study environmental economics, development economics and resource management.

In Mathematical Finance, the authors consider a mathematical model for the pricing of emissions permits. The model has particular applicability to the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) but could also be used to consider the modeling of other cap-and-trade schemes. As a response to the risk of Climate Change, carbon markets are currently being implemented in regions worldwide and already represent more than $30 billion. However, scientific, and particularly mathematical, studies of these carbon markets are needed in order to expose their advantages and shortcomings, as well as allow their most efficient implementation. This Brief reviews mathematical properties such as the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the pricing problem, stability of solutions and their behavior. These fit into the theory of fully coupled forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs) with irregular coefficients. The authors present a numerical algorithm to compute the solution to these non-standard FBSDEs. They also carry out a case study of the UK energy market. This involves estimating the parameters to be used in the model using historical data and then solving a pricing problem using the aforementioned numerical algorithm. The Brief is of interest to researchers in stochastic processes and their applications, and environmental and energy economics. Most sections are also accessible to practitioners in the energy sector and climate change policy-makers.

This work executes a unique transdisciplinary methodology building on the author's previous book, A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it (Pluto, 2010), which was the first peer-reviewed study to establish a social science framework for the integrated analysis of crises across climate, energy, food, economic, terror and the police state. Since the 2008 financial crash, the world has witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of social unrest in every major continent. Beginning with the birth of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, the eruption of civil disorder continues to wreak havoc unpredictably from Greece to Ukraine, from China to Thailand, from Brazil to Turkey, and beyond. Yet while policymakers and media observers have raced to keep up with events, they have largely missed the biophysical triggers of this new age of unrest - the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels, and its multiplying consequences for the Earth's climate, industrial food production, and economic growth. This book for the first time develops an empirically-ground theoretical model of the complex interaction between biophysical processes and geopolitical crises, demonstrated through the analysis of a wide range of detailed case studies of historic, concurrent and probable state failures in the Middle East, Northwest Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Geopolitical crises across these regions, Ahmed argues, are being driven by the proliferation of climate, food and economic crises which have at their root the common denominator of a fundamental and permanent disruption in the energy basis of industrial civilization. This inevitable energy transition, which will be completed well before the close of this century, entails a paradigm shift in the organization of civilization. Yet for this shift to result in a viable new way of life will require a fundamental epistemological shift recognizing humanity's embeddedness in the natural world. For this to be achieved, the stranglehold of conventional models achieved through the hegemony of establishment media reporting - dominated by fossil fuel interests - must be broken. While geopolitics cannot be simplistically reduced to the biophysical, this book shows that international relations today can only be understood by recognizing the extent to which the political is embedded in the biophysical. Although the book offers a rigorous scientific analysis, it is written in a clean, journalistic style to ensure readability and accessibility to a general audience. It will contain a large number of graphical illustrations concerning oil production data, population issues, the food price index, economic growth and debt, and other related issues to demonstrate the interconnections and correlations across key sectors.

Die Autoren erlautern wichtige Grundlagen fur das Verstandnis der relevanten energetischen Zusammenhange und beschreiben die wichtigsten Energietreiber. Mit Hilfe der von ihnen vorgestellten Methodik konnen bei der Planung von Fabriken fruhzeitig adaquate energieeffiziente Losungen gefunden werden. Sie stellen Instrumente zur Analyse und Bewertung des Energieverbrauchs fur die Ausgangssituation und zur Uberwachung und Beeinflussung im dauerhaften Betrieb vor. Mit Praxisbeispielen, insbesondere aus der Automobilindustrie."

In the post-9/11 world, the possibility of energy infrastructure-terrorism-the use of weapons to cause devastating damage to the energy industrial sector and cause cascading effects-is very real. Energy Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security, Second Edition, is a reference for those involved with our energy infrastructure who want quick answers to complicated questions. It is intended to help employers and employees handle security threats they must be prepared to meet on a daily basis. This updated second edition focuses on all components of the energy sector, including sites involved in producing, refining, transporting, generating, transmitting, conserving, building, distributing, maintaining, and controlling energy systems and system components. It presents common-sense methodologies in a straightforward manner and is accessible to those who have no experience with energy infrastructure or homeland security. Through this text, readers gain an understanding of the challenges of domestic preparedness and the immediate need for heightened awareness regarding the present threats faced by the energy sector as a potential terrorist target. This book provides knowledge of security principles and measures that can be implemented, adding a critical component not only to one's professional knowledge but also giving one the tools needed to combat terrorism.

The safe and continued functioning of critical infrastructures-such as electricity, natural gas, transportation, and water-is a social imperative. Yet the complex connections between these systems render them increasingly precarious. Furthermore, though we depend so heavily on interconnected infrastructures, we do not fully understand the risks involved in their failure. Emery Roe and Paul R. Schulman argue that designs, policies, and laws often overlook the knowledge and experiences of those who manage these systems on the ground-reliability professionals who have vital insights that would be invaluable to planning. To combat this major blind spot, the athors construct a new theoretical perspective that reveals how to make sense of complex interconnected networks and improve reliability through management, regulation, and political leadership. To illustrate their approach in action, they present a multi-year case study of one of the world's most important "infrastructure crossroads," the San Francisco Bay-Delta. Reliability and Risk advances our understanding of what it takes to ensure the dependability of the intricate-and sometimes hazardous-systems on which we rely every day.

Water is a basic human need and a scarce commodity with increasing value to farmers, industries, and cities in an urbanizing world. It is unpredictable in supply and quality, difficult to contain or direct, and notoriously difficult to manage well. Several trends - climate change, the endurance of widespread global water poverty, intensifying competition among rival uses and users, and the vulnerability of critical freshwater ecosystems - combine to intensify the challenges of governing water wisely, fairly, and efficiently. The twenty-seven chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy address such issues over the course of seven thematic sections. These themes reflect familiar frameworks in the water policy world, including water, poverty, and health; water and nature; and water equity and justice. Other sections look at emergent and contentious policy arenas, including the water/energy/food nexus and management of uncertainty in water supply, or connect well-established strands in new ways, including sections on water tools (water price and value, supply and demand, privatization, corporate responsibility) and issues surrounding transboundary waters. This volume conceives of water as a global issue, and gathers a diverse group of leading scholars of water politics and policy.

This publication identifies bottlenecks to regional power trading in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and proposes solutions to overcome them. The six GMS countries are striving to ensure an adequate, reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy supply for all their citizens. Toward this, the GMS countries have identified power trading as a priority for regional cooperation. However, such trading currently represents less than 2% of electricity consumed in the GMS. This publication examines the regulatory and commercial barriers that are preventing a greater uptake of power trading in the region and identifies the key measures needed to overcome them.

Ausgehend von den naturwissenschaftlichen und technischen Grundlagen werden in dem Band Technologien zur Abscheidung, Speicherung und Nutzung von klimaschadlichem CO2 vorgestellt. Der Stand der Technik wird dargelegt, die Energiebilanzen verschiedener Techniken verglichen, rechtliche, wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftspolitische Aspekte beschrieben und daruber hinaus die Standpunkte der verschiedenen Interessengruppen vorgestellt. Um sachlich informieren zu konnen, legen die Autoren die Kriterien fur die Bewertung der einzelnen Sichtweisen offen."

A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Daniel Yergin continues the riveting story begun in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Prize." In "The Quest," Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change and conflict, in a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them.
"The Quest" tells the inside stories, tackles the tough questions, and reveals surprising insights about coal, electricity, and natural gas. He explains how climate change became a great issue and leads readers through the rebirth of renewable energies, energy independence, and the return of the electric car. Epic in scope and never more timely, "The Quest "vividly reveals the decisions, technologies, and individuals that are shaping our future.

The modern financial system was developed to support the rapid economic growth that took off about 200 years ago with the phenomenal amounts of cheap energy made available through the exploitation of fossil fuels. As a result, its viability is completely dependent upon the continuation of that growth. Unfortunately, the more recent fossil fuel discoveries, especially for oil, have tended to have lower production levels than earlier ones. In addition, greater amounts of energy are required to extract the fossil fuels leading to less net energy available for society. The Energy Return On Investment (EROI) for oil has fallen from 30:1 in the 1970's to 10:1 today. Thus, newer energy finds produce lower extraction rates and more of the energy provided is offset by the energy used in the extraction processes. The result has been economic stagnation or even contraction, with growth in China and India etc. only possible due to the extensive use of local coal reserves, and recession-induced drops in OECD country energy use. Renewable sources of energy will not be able to expand fast enough to replace the 87% of energy supplies provided by fossil fuels, and apart from hydro and wind, tend to have very low EROI rates. They are also critically dependent upon the cheap energy infrastructure provided by fossil fuels. The phenomenal amounts of path-dependent energy infrastructure will also greatly inhibit any move away from fossil fuels.

Without continued economic growth there will not be the extra output to fund loan interest payments, nor the revenue and profit growth to support share price/earnings multiples. The financial system acts as a time machine, creating asset prices based upon perceptions of the future. As an increasing percentage of investors come to accept the future reality of at best, financial asset prices will fall to reflect a realistic future. The resulting crash will remove the underpinnings of the banking, brokerage, mutual fund, pension fund, and insurance industries. The comfortable futures of many will be shown to have been based upon a mirage of future growth that will not take place. With the financial system acting as the critical coordination system of the global economy, its crash will also intensify economic problems. Written by a retired financial industry executive with over 25 years of experience, this book describes how the crisis will affect different regions and industries to help identify the career and investment choices which may provide a relative safe harbour.

Oil and gas projects have special characteristics that need a different technique in project management. The development of any country depends on the development of the energy reserve through investing in oil and gas projects through onshore and offshore exploration, drilling, and increasing facility capacities. Therefore, these projects need a sort of management match with their characteristics, and project management is the main tool to achieving a successful project. Written by a veteran project manager who has specialized in oil and gas projects for years, this book focuses on using practical tools and methods that are widely and successfully used in project management for oil and gas projects. Most engineers study all subjects, but focus on project management in housing projects, administration projects, and commercial buildings or other similar projects. However, oil and gas projects have their own requirements and characteristics in management from the owners, engineering offices, and contractors' side. Not only useful to graduating engineers, new hires, and students, this volume is also an invaluable addition to any veteran project manager's library as a reference or a helpful go-to guide. Also meant to be a refresher for practicing engineers, it covers all of the project management subjects from an industrial point of view specifically for petroleum projects, making it the perfect desktop manual. Not just for project managers and students, this book is helpful to any engineering discipline or staff in sharing or applying the work of a petroleum project and is a must-have for anyone working in this industry.

Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century--fueled by coal and steam engines--redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. Power to the People offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand.

Die Arbeit untersucht die Kollision und Abwagung zwischen allgemeinem Persoenlichkeitsrecht und Meinungsfreiheit bei Internetangeboten aus einer verfassungsrechtlichen Perspektive. Dazu werden die fur die spatere Abwagung relevanten rechtlichen und tatsachlichen Gewichtungspunkte ermittelt und in ein Abwagungsmodell uberfuhrt. Schwerpunktmassig uber das Tatbestandsmerkmal der Information wird sodann ein Loesungsvorschlag fur Kollisionen im Internet unterbreitet. Ausschlaggebend ist der Einfluss in den entscheidenden Phasen der Informationsverarbeitungsprozesse.

This handbook serves as a guide to deploying battery energy storage technologies, specifically for distributed energy resources and flexibility resources. Battery energy storage technology is the most promising, rapidly developed technology as it provides higher efficiency and ease of control. With energy transition through decarbonization and decentralization, energy storage plays a significant role to enhance grid efficiency by alleviating volatility from demand and supply. Energy storage also contributes to the grid integration of renewable energy and promotion of microgrid.

The Limits to Growth (Meadows, 1972) generated unprecedented controversy with its predictions of the eventual collapse of the world's economies. First hailed as a great advance in science, The Limits to Growth was subsequently rejected and demonized. However, with many national economies now at risk and global peak oil apparently a reality, the methods, scenarios, and predictions of The Limits to Growth are in great need of reappraisal. In "The" "Limits to Growth Revisited," Ugo Bardi examines both the science and the polemics surrounding this work, and in particular the reactions of economists that marginalized its methods and conclusions for more than 30 years. The Limits to Growth was a milestone in attempts to model the future of our society, and it is vital today for both scientists and policy makers to understand its scientific basis, current relevance, and the social and political mechanisms that led to its rejection. Bardi also addresses the all-important question of whether the methods and approaches of The Limits to Growth can contribute to an understanding of what happened to the global economy in the Great Recession and where we are headed from there."

Meteorological and climate data are indeed essential both in day-to-day energy management and for the definition of production and distribution infrastructures. For instance, the supply of electricity to users can be disturbed by extreme meteorological events such as thunderstorms with unusually strong winds, severe icing, severe cold spells, sea level elevation associated with storm surges, floods ... To be protected against such events, it is not sufficient to act after they have taken place. It is necessary to identify their potential impacts precisely and assess the probability of their occurrence. This book shows that this can only be done through an enhanced dialogue between the energy community and the climate and meteorology community. This implies an in-depth dialogue between actors to define precisely what kind of data is needed and how it should be used. Meteo-France has been in long-term cooperation with the energy sector, including the fields of electricity production and distribution. Drawing on this experience, it should be noted in this respect the importance of lo- term partnership between actors as exemplified here by the message of EDF."

Economic diversification remains at the top of the agenda for hundreds of regions around the world. From the single commodity economies of African countries and the Caribbean, to the many single industry regions of Europe and North America, as well as the oil and gas rich but volatile hydrocarbon economies. Economic diversification policies have been around for almost a century with varying degrees of success and failure. Economic Diversification Policies in Natural Resource Rich Economies takes a special interest in the policy experiences of a set of different countries that have extractive industries representing significant drivers of their economies and subsequently are significant contributors to government revenues. It explores twelve cases including upper-middle to high income economies such as Canada, Australia, Iceland and Norway, emerging economies such as Latin America, the GCC (Saudi and UAE), Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Russia, as well as the developing economy of Uganda. Each chapter provides a review of economic diversification experiences including policy environment, diversification strategies, desired outcomes, the role of government, and a critical evaluation of achievements. This book is suitable for those who study environmental economics, development economics and resource management.

The objective of this textbook is to introduce students and professionals to fundamental principles and techniques and emerging technologies in energy informatics and the digitalization of power markets and systems. The book covers such areas as smart grids and artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT), with a focus on information and communication technologies (ICT) deployed to modernize the electric energy infrastructure. It also provides an overview of the smart grid and its main components: smart grid applications at transmission, distribution, and customer level, network requirements with communications technologies, and standards and protocols. In addition, the book addresses emerging technologies and trends in next-generation power systems, i.e., energy informatics, such as digital green shift, energy cyber-physical-social systems (E-CPSS), energy IoT, energy blockchain, and advanced optimization. Future aspects of digitalized power markets and systems will be discussed with real-world energy informatics projects. The book is designed to be a core text in upper-undergraduate and graduate courses such as Introduction to Smart Grids, Digitalization of Power Systems, and Advanced Power System Topics in Energy Informatics.